


broken pieces

by sparklies



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: F/M, Kintsugi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklies/pseuds/sparklies
Summary: Lisbon knows nothing is ever truly broken.(just a tiny au where the teacup prop in 7x06 green light wasn't just glued perfectly together, don't mind me)
Relationships: Patrick Jane/Teresa Lisbon
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	broken pieces

> "You kept the pieces."
> 
> "Yeah. Looks pretty nice, doesn't it?"

"Pretty nice" may be a bit of an understatement. The new teacup has beautiful lines of gold running through it, some bigger than others, every seam and fragment telling the story of her, of him, of _them_.

* * *

Lisbon doesn't know why she picked up the pieces, she just knows that she will never see him again and this is the last souvenir of their 'normal' whateverthisis, working relationship, friendship, partnership???

Back at home, she unsuccessfully tries to glue the pieces back together into something resembling what it once was, but she was never much of a crafter, and despite her best efforts gathering as much as she could, there's just too many pieces missing. Too much missing, too many words unsaid and never said and weeks later she'll get his final voicemail but it's not enough, won't ever be enough.

Still, she can't bear to throw it out (to throw it out would be to erase history), and the pieces sit and taunt her and remind her of failure every single day, and it's not until weeks later when she stumbles across videos of people putting back together ceramics with gold lacquer, that something inside her shifts.

She buys a kintsugi kit that very same hour.

The first day she reads one of his letters, even before she's fully aware of it, her hands are already moving, methodically making gold.

It becomes a ritual, rejoining a broken piece every time she hears from him, but she never does more than one piece at a time. The more the pieces start to resemble a cup once more, the more she wants to break them apart again, scared of what will happen when she no longer has this, no longer has him.

But then he's there hugging her and he looks so different and he's in handcuffs again but he's there and she never thought she would see him again. That night (totally coincidentally, of course, she tells herself) she spends hours crafting an entire missing teacup fragment.

She starts dating Pike, but after every date, still finds herself piecing together bits of ceramic from her previous life. Bits of her heart, she realises belatedly. "Pike is good for me," she tries to repeat into the side of the almost-complete teacup, hoping to make the words ring true as if the precious fracture running through the teacup wasn't a symbol of all the ways that Jane had already broken and changed her.

Nothing gold can stay. The more she tries to convince herself she belongs with Pike, the gulf between _them_ widens, while the remaining gaps in the teacup fill, but for one - filling in the final piece feels like a sort of finality to their whateverthisis she isn't quite ready to face. She packs the teacup almost reverently, separate from her other belongings.

And then _Blue Bird_ happens, and suddenly (she inwardly groans at the cliché, but can't help it) all the pieces fit together.

* * *

Later that evening, she'll catch him gazing at her in wonder as he runs his fingers over every perfect, imperfect line, the final one forming the shape of a heart.

"We're stronger in the places that we've been broken."

**Author's Note:**

> (with apologies to [kintsugi](https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/) artists everywhere)


End file.
